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Lobbyists swarm supercommittee

Groups and businesses are pressing supercommittee members to spare them from cuts. | AP Photo

Members of the supercommittee and their staffers have largely kept a lock on what is being discussed. Even in private meetings with other lawmakers, their lips are sealed. Mark Prater, the panel’s staff director, and his deputy had dinner with bipartisan Senate chiefs of staff at Bistro Bis on Capitol Hill last week, and divulged little.

The little that’s known is not promising for a major deal. Both sides, according to aides familiar with the discussions, still cannot come to agreement on basic principles to guide discussions.

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What has been presented is partisan and unlikely to pass — proposals similar to the Republican budget that was presented at the beginning of the year. In fact, on the health side, the GOP has laid down block-granting Medicaid, hundreds of billions in cuts to Medicare and other health care principles from the budget released by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).

Requests for comment from the offices of the supercommittee cochairs, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), were not returned by press time.

With the deadline just weeks away, both parties are getting nervous, particularly since Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) have stepped up their involvement in the committee. Some are looking at the paralysis, and cringing.

If the committee doesn’t reach a big enough deal, and the United States faces another credit downgrade, no one will walk away looking good, and serious damage could be done to the economy. Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s does not comment on ratings decisions, a spokesman said, and it will judge the package when it comes out.

“This target wasn’t picked out of a hat — failure to achieve this deficit reduction would lead to substantial risk of a downgrade, which would have serious consequences for jobs and our economy,” a senior GOP aide said, speaking without attribution to openly discuss the party’s fears.

More broadly, Wall Street wants to see the system fixed. For many on Capitol Hill, tax reform would be the pinnacle of deficit cutting and signal a structural fix. A discussion draft of the international tax bill is likely this week, sources said. In the GOP meeting on Friday afternoon, Camp’s staffers made clear that the effort is going to be part of a broader tax overhaul. Details are paltry, but will include a mandatory repatriation of corporate money overseas, coupled with a separate provision that lowers corporate tax rates to 25 percent.

The draft legislation is likely to make its way to the business community this week.

Going forward, lobbying will boom if tax reform is seriously considered. Aides said some sort of tax reform by a date certain is looking more and more likely. The committee, though, will not mandate that tax reform generate a certain level of revenue but is likely to specify tax rates.

This is disgusting and completely un-american. Hate to invoke the Tea Party here, but the founding fathers are rolling in their graves for just how badly our "democracy" has deteriorated in the past 35 years.

There are 35 or so lobbyists per ONE member of congress. This is disgusting. Politicians no longer care about what the people want, the only thing they consider when voting is how it will affect the companies that give them election cash, and their stockholders.

WHY? Why should we as their employeers ALLOW this type of behavior? I DON'T CARE, if you're a Republican OR Democrat, WE SHOULD all agree on this POINT. WHY DON'T WE MAKE THEM STOP? Our elected 'ONES' work for WE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, NOT BIG BUSINESS. YOU KNOW they think WE'RE FOOLS....ARE WE?

It always brings us back to Term Limits. These elected offices were designed to be similar to a board of trustees positiion. Public servants positions were never supposed to be considered a career or be the result of millions of dollars of ( questionable ) income.

Crony Capitalism, has progressively turned us into a failing Capitalist Country.

“During my 42 years in Washington, this is the most closed-mouth committee that I have seen,” said Gerald Cassidy, veteran K-Streeter of Cassidy & Associates.

This is my favorite part and gives me hope. NOT IN MY BACK YARD

This committee should continue to be a part of the Congress. The less the leaders are directly involved, the better. We didn't get here overnight and this committee has years of work ahead of them.

$ 1.2 Trillion is a drop in the bucket. This a just a decrease in the amount of increase over the next 10 years. It does not come close to approaching paying down the accumulated debt. It was good to see the gang of 6 involved. I remain a big supporter of the the Coburn plan to cut $ 9 T in 10 years. His plan, however, is short on revenue.

As America evolves from maximum government to minimum government, K-street and its miscreant lobbyists like Trent Lott are going to have to be delt with. Now may be a good time to start thinking about this. Once we correct the budget deficit and go over to a reasonable surplus we are going have to clean the stain of Washington DC in a way that the stain doesn't keep coming back like Jason.